Examining Why Some Notes Sound Good Together
While two notes sounding good together is actually a relatively subjective experience based on personal preference, there is some reasonings as to why one pairing of notes might sound more pleasing to the ears than another. Rather than looking at notes sounding good or bad together, it may be more worthwhile to look at consonance and dissonance, which simply means the feeling of harmony and disharmony respectively.
Ultimately, what sounds good to us is a matter of personal opinion and preference and perhaps what we were influenced or surrounded by when growing up (like cultural influences). So if you were exposed to many harmonious notes you might find the most pleasing and vice versa. Exposure is not just limited to our early life, as we can always develop new inters later in life as well.
Kilroy J. Oldster put it fantastically in saying “The poetry of music composes each generation of Americans’ autobiographical memories. Language and music represent two rotaries of the revolving and evolving wheels that we employ to internalize the axis of identification. Music plays a profound role in the definitive stages of most people’s lives. Reminiscent of the sounds and smells that flavored our youth, musical intonations organize our personal memories into temporal time sequence. Modulation of musical memories comprises an important quotient in people’s autographical memory system. If we listen to enough music, its pitch, tone, timbre, and cadence eventually seeps into our unconsciousness. The lilt of music becomes a portal through which we perceive, feel, and experience worldly inflections and how we synthesize swirling emotions.”
We are each our own person, and in that individualization, it can be difficult to remember that we are a product of our environment so much so that even the things we may feel makes us unique is shared by at least one other person.